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Comment by mikeash | Hacker News Reader

More specifically, a public opinion problem.

Techies tend to think that the US government has gone rogue and is defying the people, who universally want to tone this stuff down. But really, the government is just responding to the will of the people here. Many Americans are terrified of terrorism and approve of these sorts of government efforts to fight it.

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The US government's propaganda machine is what made Americans "terrified of terrorism" in the first place. The government is sowing terror propaganda quite intentionally in order to claim and retain (historically, in the US) exceptional powers to control its own citizens. If the propaganda was toned down to 1/1000th its current volume, I think we'd suffer far less intrusion into our lives and would be no less safe, but the government would be the loser, with all of these mechanisms of control vanishing.

I could see where you're coming from, but the two objective arguments I see that argue for the toning down of government surveillance, or at least major changes to our surveillance system would be:

1. The current policies and attitude are [seemingly] going to have negative economic impacts of enormous proportions.

2. Surveillance will always be a cat and mouse game as technology improves, and surveillance will become increasingly difficult, perhaps impossible.

I agree, and I think the surveillance should be drastically reformed. I just think that the only way to accomplish this is to convince a large chunk of the population to change their minds on the issue, not to try to start at the top of government.

I guess eventually those people will be at the top of government, which is really cool to think about.

As communities become more and more siloed, people will increasingly assume that their social bubble's opinions are the opinions and will of the majority. They will then look to the behavior of legislators and see "the will of the majority" being disregarded. This bodes ill for representative democracy, especially in a two-party system like the US.

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